Renaissance Festival to use new traffic plan, revised ticketing this season

HUNTERSVILLE, N.C. — To help address traffic issues that have plagued the annual Carolina Renaissance Festival in Huntersville, event organizers have announced significant changes for the 2022 season.

Last year, nearby residents complained to Channel 9 saying they could not get to their homes or leave them because of the gridlock during the event, which is held on weekends in October and November.

PAST COVERAGE: Neighbors near Renaissance Festival want something done about ‘traffic nightmare’

Festival organizers met with community representatives and made a commitment to make changes for the upcoming 2022 event season.

On Monday, event producer Jeffrey Siegel shared a new traffic management plan that includes proposed detour routes for non-festival related traffic and a relocated entry with improved paving on Popular Tent Road. The new plan calls for increased staffing and training as well.

In addition, tickets will be limited for each date of the festival. Instead of selling general admission tickets that can be used on any single event date, a limited number of date-specific tickets will be sold online. Tickets will no longer be sold at retail locations and will only be offered at the festival’s on-site box office on an event day, if a date is not sold out in advance.

The festival will also open 30 minutes earlier, at 9:30 a.m. on each of its 16 event days.

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In a news release, Siegel said the festival intends to voluntarily dial back potential ticket sales, reducing available attendance on an experimental basis to test the results of revised traffic controls, improved parking plans and other event operational changes.

“The change in opening hours and revised ticketing, combined with substantially increased traffic and parking management, should go a long way towards mitigating festival traffic impacts on its surrounding communities,” Siegel said.

To see the complete 2022 event operating and traffic management planning report, click here.

The 29th annual Carolina Renaissance Festival will be held on Saturdays and Sundays from Oct. 1 to Nov. 20. The festival takes place on a 250-acre farm located north of Charlotte, between Concord and Huntersville, at the junction of North Carolina Highway 73 and Poplar Tent Road.

For more information, go to carolina.renfestinfo.com.

(WATCH BELOW: Some residents say Renaissance Festival traffic problems still persist)